thursday the 19th

Before i fill you in on my last couple of days i have a few very disturbing conversations that i keep thinking about and that i forgot to record.

On shabbat afternoon the african boys made fufu and soup. Fufu is plantain and cassava paste. The way you eat this meal is by pouring it all into a big bowl and then sharing it between the bunch of you. You eat it with your hands. Or specifically, your right hand. Now one of the nigerian boys is left handed. So he's not allowed to eat with the others. He has his own bowl with his own food. I mean i get it, because in ghana normally the right hand is for food and the left is for going to the toilet. But obviously if you are left handed it will be reversed and therefore your left hand is the clean one. Nevertheless he is excluded. Now, it's not such a big deal, personally i wouldn't mind having my own bowl of food. But in africa it's really insulting to make somebody eat separately, essentially excluding them from the meal. We were talking about it. Shola, the left-handed nigerian, accepted that it's the way it was but he made a good argument about why it is wrong. His left hand is clean so why should he be excluded simply for being different.

This lead to a conversation with a sociology student about culture and morality. Very quickly we moved from discussing left-handed people to homosexual people. In both cases they are excluded for being different. Alex, the sociology student made a super post-modern argument that there is not objective morality and there's not such thing as right or wrong culture. Therefore the fact that it is culture gives it legitimacy and is acceptable. I made the argument that even though we cannot know objective morality we can nevertheless strive to be more moral and that culture should attempt to correct itself and become more moral. Therefore ghanaian practices such a ritual sex slaves and female genital mutilation and the killing of homosexuals are practices that should stop. We didn't really get very far because even though he conceded that culture can change and does change, he refused to accept that the mere fact that it is culture is not a get out of jail free card for unethical practices. It was a really difficult conversation for me where at times he argued that gay people are such a threat to the structure of society that it is better that they are dead. That even if they are a doctor and can save other people's lives the danger they pose to traditional society is too great that we should kill them. And yet, he couldn't explain what threat they actually pose by not having sex with women. Or even by having consensual sex with men. He argued that every african must have children and that's why it was so wrong. But then i asked what if they are infertile? Surely then we should have to kill all barren women since they are also a threat to the value of reproduction. In any case the conversation ended with a recognition that neither of us were going to change our positions. I come from a place of criticism of culture, particularly even on my own culture and he comes from a place of accepting authority and tradition no matter what. Which is interesting for a sociology student. This is a theme and an attitude that that comes up a lot on ghana. I will discuss it more with you later.

Anyways at some point during the conversation a ghanaian girl called esther joined in. She's a law student. In the course of discussing homosexuality i explained why i don't have a problem with it because i believe that adults can make their own decisions and as long as the act is between two consenting adults that there's nothing wrong with it. Then they asked me about incest. I said that i believe that incest is wrong where there is a power imbalance ie: parent over child or both participants are too young to be making these decisions. I explained that young people cannot make these decisions and therefore the law has to protect them. That is why the legal age for sex is 16 years old. It is the same in ghana so esther asked me if i think the age should be lowered. I said no. She then proceeded to make the argument that people from the age of 10 can make these sorts of decisions. She explained that in ghana a 10 year old is a full-time worker. They sell in stalls on the streets, they manage their businesses, they work as farmers, they are often big financial contributors to their family. Meaning that are adults and can also chose who they have sex with. I then explained that 10 year olds are not actually developed enough psychologically to really understand the consequences of their actions. Indeed even teenagers cannot and that is why they have risky behaviours, particularly with regards to sex. She then noted, rightly, that even adults make bad decisions but that doesn't mean that they shouldn't be able to chose. I argued that the fact that a child is working doesn't mean that they want to be doing that, or that they are as capable of doing this as an adult. It is the fault of society that we cannot send them to school and enable them to have a real childhood. Furthermore 10 year olds who are 'choosing' to have sex are also put into an unfortunate situation by society where they are vulnerable and we are failing to protect them. Indeed, it is the role of the law to protect the vulnerable.

We had to end the conversation because at no point were either of us going to change our minds. She was adamant that maybe 10 year olds in Australia were less developed but that in ghana they were certainly capable of being full adult members of society providing for their families and having sex. And i was not going to change my mind that children are vulnerable and need to be protected. It was just super distressing for me to be having this conversation at all. Particularly with a woman. Particularly with somebody is who educated. Particularly with a law student. If all those factors haven't enabled her to realise that we need to protect our children, or any member of society who is weak then really what hope is these for those who are at risk? Who is going to protect them? I like to think that she didn't really believe what she was saying but that rather she felt very threatened with how critical i'd been of her culture when discussing homosexuality and was therefore stuck in a position of defending her culture and society no matter what. Even if it means advocating for the legalisation of paedophilia. It doesn't completely exonerate her but i find some comfort in that thought.

Lastly since we are discussing issues with ghanaian culture i am going to relay a conversation/conflict we had last night. At about 10.30 at night, last night, one of the ghanaians comes into our room with a chinese girl in tow. He tells us she is going to sleep in our room. But there were only 5 mattresses in the room and there were no more mattresses. Where were we going to put the new girl? Moreover there are only 4 girls in the other room, furthermore, the other room is even larger than ours. So why were there 6 girls in our room and 4 girls in the other room? So i asked, are we moving another mattress in here? He said no. So i said well, maybe we should move her into the other room since there is more room there. His reply was 'this was gyimah's decision, so this is what we are doing.' Gyimah meanwhile is not in the house, he had gone to accra for the day. And so i replied ' well in his absence we can make common sense decisions.' At this the ghanaian (nicknamed Snoopy) became offended and left the room. Later another ghanaian came in and told us that one of the chinse girls wasn't going to sleep in our room so there is actually only 5 girls in the room not 6. This made more sense. But then when we asked which chinese girl he wouldn't tell us. When we asked were she was sleeping he also wouldn't tell us that. He then asserted that the ghanaians running the house can move any of us at any time anywhere and they aren't accountable to any of us. I found this hilarious. And asked if he was going to move me. He said maybe. I said no worries, are you going to give me a piggy back or carry me in your arms? He, i suppose understandably, didn't like this and left the room.

This morning snoopy called me into his room where i was to discuss what happened last night with him and andy (andy was the guy who threatened to move me to another room). Snoopy explained that he was offended because i implied that he wasn't using common sense in his decision making and that i had the gall to question the decision at al. He explained that he is 27 and i am only 23 and that in ghana we always defer to the older person. Indeed, we always accept the decisions of the person in authority and don't question them or ask for explanations. I then apologised for implying that he was not making a common sense decision but i explained that had he simply come forward and explained to us straight away that they were moving the other chinese girl and that this is the new girl and therefore there will be 5 girls in each room he could have avoided the whole conflict. Indeed when i implied that the decision didn't make sense, instead of saying that it's simply gyimah's decision and that's final, if he'd explained it and defended the logic behind the decision then it would have made sense and we wouldn't have had anything to complain about. But because he refused to explain things to us we couldn't understand what was going on and had to continue to demand an explanation. As long as we demanded that explanation he saw that as questioning his authority, and since authority is not meant to be questioned in ghana that was offensive and problematic. I also explained that making authoritarian decisions might work in a house of ghanaians but when you have people from other cultures, who say have less respect for authority, a more consultative approach to decision-making might be more effective. I then apologised again for offending him and said that i hope that the lesson we learnt from this is that it's best to share all information we have when making decisions since this is the best way to avoid conflict. I don't think he agreed but i think he was sick of arguing with me. He still seems to think that the best way to avoid conflict is by simply accepting authority. Oh well.

This brings me to another important point. Development and culture. i've been trying very hard to understand how it is that africa is so fucked. On my tro tro last night (more about that later) i listened to a lecture about Israeli democracy and religious radicalism. I then began thinking about how it is that israel and ghana are about the same age and when they were established they were at the same level of development (more or less) and yet in the past 50 years ghana has gone backwards where as israel is now classified as a first world country. Ghana has every valuable natural resource you could need; gold, oil, fishing, good rain, strong harvests, no wars. Israel on the other hand is majority dessert, has no natural resources per say and has been constantly plagued by war. So with all the odds stacked against israel how is it that in israel all the roads are paved and that electricity and water access are standard and that children are not working on the farms?

Well, it's about the culture. Do you have a culture that blindly accepts authority or do you have a culture that questions, and demands answers and accountability? This is most prevalent in the democratic nature of israel vs ghana. Since establishment ghana has gone through a series of coups leading to one military dictatorship after the other. For the past 20 years ghana has been democratic so this is changing. But really it's only been the past 12 years or so since the first few elections were 'won' by the previous military dictator. Israel on the other hand has consistently been a democracy, a flawed one, but i'd argue it has one of the strongest democratic systems in the world. There are many competing and opposing interests in the parliament and yet they still manage to form governments. The strength of a democracy is that if you are doing a shit job you are going to lose your job. It makes you accountable. You need to make good decisions and to defend them against the opposition and the media and to the electorate. This is the opposite of african culture where your chief has absolute authority, it is an inherited position and it is maintained until death. The chief is not answerable to anybody, it is the role of everybody else to simply accept their decisions.

In my culture however we got rid of that system a long time a go. Even 2,000 years ago the leaders of the community were chosen not based on inheritance but based on merit, they were the brightest scholars. Even then, they worked on a panel with the sanhedrin making decisions together and ultimately accepting that just because you are the head of the sanhedrin your decision is not final and sometimes you are going to be overruled by the majority. Indeed rarely in Jewish law and practice do we find any sort of uniformity. Any decision made by a community or rabbinical leader must be explained and even then, rabbis and leaders are going to consistently disagree with each other leading to a wealth of opinions and differences. In fact a decision derives it's authority not from the decision maker but from the logic and reasonableness of the decision itself. I know that modern judaism doesn't always match this and that hassidic leaders sometimes work on more of the chieftaincy system but nevertheless they always write long answers explaining the reasons behind their decisions.

This culture of questioning enables growth and development. As i was explaining earlier to Alex and esther that just because it is your culture doesn't mean that it's automatically right and it doesn't mean you have to accept it. I am the most critical of my own culture and my own traditions in attempting to better them and make them more moral. Indeed i think that everybody would be better off if we had less respect for authority. I think if we held our leaders to account we would get better leadership. I think if we got better leadership maybe people in ghana would have a waste disposal system provided for by the government instead of having to burn your own rubbish and pump your own water from under ground.

So on the question of 'is democracy good for africa?' Heck yes it is. Ghana has changed and grown exponentially since becoming democratic. But is it a natural part of their culture? Absolutely not. Yet it is changing. And my hope is that the more people become educated, the better that will be at demanding answers. Perhaps then people will stop taking 12 year old girls as ritual sex slaves simply because it is your 'culture.'